Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stay Gold, America

blog.codinghorror.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 239 posts

Re: Stay Gold, America

#161

Post by micromacrofoot »

gadders wrote: post #57
gandalfgeek wrote: post #36

Most charities on that list are on sharp sides of deeply polarizing culture war issues and it is not at all clear that their causes align with the “American Dream”. If the last election was any indication then more than half the country explicitly rejected many of them.

Yeah, this is more like a democrat wish list, donating to help polices that the electorate didn't want.

abortion rights did amazingly well even in states that supported trump...

the other issues are:

* child hunger

* veteran support

* censorship

* financial literacy

so I guess the unpopular ones in your eyes are...

* civil rights

* lgbtq rights

* immigration

hard to give a blanket "democrat wishlist" when more than half are generally favorable across party lines

Re: Stay Gold, America

#162

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gadders wrote: post #113
thrance wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was already investigated "properly"... Republicans states have been going crazy over it since at least 2016. If there was any evidence of it would have been found by now, now it's just another red herring. Agreed on your second paragraph.

I think it is hard for political parties to investigate anything. You would need law enforcement for that. It is also my understanding that most voter fraud challenges in 2016 were dismissed due to lack of standing, before the facts were considered.

Some were dismissed for lack of standing. (I, a resident of state X, can't sue about state Y's voting just because I think there's something wrong there.)

Some were dismissed for failure to state a legally tryable claim, or for lack of evidence. ("I think there's something going on there" is not a legally valid ground for a lawsuit. You have to have something that at least looks like evidence in order to get in the door.)

Re: Stay Gold, America

#163

Post by AnimalMuppet »

valar_m wrote: post #104
gadders wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No evidence yet . I guess we might find out more in the next 4 years when it is investigated properly. If you want to put elections beyond doubt and make everyone accept the result you should have voter ID and paper ballots. The public holiday idea is probably not a bad one.

What do you mean? There is no evidence at all that Trump won by voter fraud.

I believe the claim was, with Trump in power there will now be a proper investigation of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

I have doubts. First, as someone else pointed out, there already has been lots of investigation in Republican-run states, and they turned up very little. Second, Trump seems to have the ego-driven need to deny that he lost. He seems to have the tendency to hire people who tell him what he wants to hear, and to fire those that don't. That's not likely to drive an impartial investigation.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#164

Post by piva00 »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #142
piva00 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rich already means you have a higher drive from greed, allowing greedy people in positions of power doesn't mean it makes them less corruptible just that the corruption is on a higher level and degree. Instead of an official taking a bribe on a briefcase full of cash there are layers of indirection, contracts between companies, some kind of trust somewhere that benefits from it, someone gets employed in a pos…

> Getting rich already means you have a higher drive from greed I know tons of people who work at NVidia for whom this isn’t true. They love working on hardware and suddenly we’re worth 8 figures because of the rise of the stock.

Getting rich as an employee from a lucky draw at employment is very different than how the vast majority of politicians got rich.

I don't believe this kind of nitpicking helped to further any discussion around the main point I made.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#165

Post by coldtea »

throwpoaster wrote: post #144
coldtea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is the best country in the world for growing something new The 27th best, if that new thing is supposed to lift your social/economic status upwards: "The US ranked 27th in the 2020 Global Social Mobility Index". But it might well be the best for people to build new businesses of scale (especially already well off people).

I'm talking about economic mobility, not social mobility.

That's what social mobility means here too.

We're not talking about someone moving up the ranks in a caste system.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#166

Post by coldtea »

throwpoaster wrote: post #124
coldtea wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're orthogonal. You can start and business and get downwards social mobility (lose your personal investment in a bussiness which fails). And inversely, you can get upwards mobility without starting a business (like with a promotion or getting a better job). Or rather, in the last decades, increasingly you can't. But traditionally, that was the way most people saw it. The "company man" going through the ranks, the…

This is only true if you consider absolute instead of expected value and cherry pick statistical outcomes. Successful business people start multiple businesses. Social class and economic class are different. Few successful welders go to the opera.

>Successful business people start multiple businesses.

Which is irrelevant to the points discussed, no?

Nobody claimed successful business people don't start multiple businesses.

>Social class and economic class are different. Few successful welders go to the opera

Social mobility in the context of this discussion is about getting better jobs and making more money. It's not about becoming an aristocrat or going to the Opera...

Re: Stay Gold, America

#167

Post by gadders »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #161
gadders wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is more like a democrat wish list, donating to help polices that the electorate didn't want.

abortion rights did amazingly well even in states that supported trump... the other issues are: * child hunger * veteran support * censorship * financial literacy so I guess the unpopular ones in your eyes are... * civil rights * lgbtq rights * immigration hard to give a blanket "democrat wishlist" when more than half are generally favorable across party lines

Going through the list:

* child hunger - Global rather than US-focussed.

* veteran support - OK

* censorship - Ish. The campus free speech stuff looks OK, but there is the usual culture war "book banning" by preventing sexually explicit material been shown to young children.

* financial literacy - OK

* civil rights - a lot of it looks like the Soros-funded lenient DA stuff

* lgbtq rights - I think the main flashpoint is the "t" in that acronym

* immigration - obviously contentious, even within right wing circles

Re: Stay Gold, America

#168

Post by disambiguation »

docdeek wrote: post #9

>> Whatever the reasons, 42% of adults living in America had no say in the 2024 election. The vote failed to represent everyone. The 2024 election had a turnout of about 59% of the voting age population. Since 1972, only one presidential election had higher turnout than that (it was 2020). If the 2024 vote didn’t represent everyone, then most every election for the last half century has been even worse at representin…

On top of that, swing state turn out was like 70%. Goes to show more people turn up when their vote could make a difference.

Re: Stay Gold, America

#169

Post by throwpoaster »

dandellion wrote: post #92
coldtea wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> America is the best country in the world for growing something new The 27th best, if that new thing is supposed to lift your social/economic status upwards: "The US ranked 27th in the 2020 Global Social Mobility Index". But it might well be the best for people to build new businesses of scale (especially already well off people).

That's because making it easy to start your own company will only provide upwards mobility to My grandpa worked in agriculture, my dad in a factory, and I'm a software engineer. The only reason I became the first in my family to go to university is that in my country as long as I passed all my classes I was pretty much guaranteed to not pay a euro for attending university. I even went to one of the top 5 universities…

As someone pointed out, education is not clearly a moral good of itself. The median Nazi was highly educated.

https://youtu.be/aazlO39MPMg?si=12GOHejB6Tjt5_BA

Re: Stay Gold, America

#170

Post by throwpoaster »

coldtea wrote: post #165
throwpoaster wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking about economic mobility, not social mobility.

That's what social mobility means here too. We're not talking about someone moving up the ranks in a caste system.

The report you cited was about social mobility, specifically excluding economic mobility.

Per your citation, fewer welders go to the ballet, but they are richer, across generations.

Post reply on HN